The World Is Round, completes the new commercial fit out for the combined media forces of Grundy and Crackerjack Entertainment: FremantleMedia. FremantleMedia one of the largest international creators and producers of program brands in the world, with leading prime time entertainment, drama, and factual entertainment programming wanted a playful corporate space. The World Is Round Pty Ltd, Colliers International Work Place Integration, ITC Engineers and Intrec Management worked collaboratively to create a dynamic corporate space that exposed the nature of their vibrant business. The headquarters located in the heart of the production house community, the lower North Shore at 110-112 Christie Street, St. Leonards produced many design challenges and also provided many exciting opportunities. The upgraded building and internal fit out, spread over approximately 1600 sqm has been transformed into a home for ninety employees and freelancers over three compact floors and a newly installed roof top terrace. "The visitor must see and feel the people to understand the organizations energy and thus its ability to do business," says Andrew Cliffe who was passionate about revolutionizing the old headquarters and re-energising business practice. "We decided to allocate the ground floor to the extensive 24hour operational post production facilities, to focus attention the verve of the post production people. To create that energy visitors can feel immediately." As a result, the tape rooms, library storage, traffic managers, edit suites, 3d suites and sound studios at FremantleMedia are all located on the ground floor. Exposing to visitors an area that incorporates intricate audio visual and acoustic engineering. Slick finishes such as Axoltle, quartz carpet and the upholstered Moov™ wall system add lighthearted texture and rhythmic form to the environment. Each floor boasts its own unique feel, while unexpected meeting rooms show the creative flair Andrew Cliffe's is known for. "Fremantle Media loved the individuality of the existing freestanding building they were occupying and hence the project embarked on designing headquarters with a full base building upgrade including services upgrade to current BCA guidelines." Andrew Cliffe's proposal of zen dens, water features, organic vegetable gardens, baachi sand pits, barbeque entertaining and yoga meditation huts, won him and The World is Round the right to re-invent FremantleMedia's new corporate home. Early in the piece the project team took a brief and tried to understand the way FremantleMedia work as well as their vision for the future. While many other building options were considered, FremantleMedia were extremely visionary in their ability to understand and communicate their critical requirements. The World is Round was faced with the challenge of utilizing small floor plates and the natural vertical separation of departments this creates over floors. The team worked hard at establishing the most efficient space requirements to allow for the internal split in business operations to have a positive effect. Along with ensuring maximum natural light penetrated into the hearts of the floors, this drove the planning in defining the important allocation of the community anchoring zones. "How do you allow an organization to collaborate if they are spread over various floors?" questioned Andrew Cliffe. The solution was to carefully allocate shared community amenities to draw the teams to interact in communal spaces. The first floor houses the community cafe allowing direct access to the northern early morning sun filled balcony. Located adjacent to this is the client focused media boardroom. It is also used as a device for moving visitors through the building. The boardroom flips the old psychology of hiding the guts of organization on its head. Through its central location it allows the work place to be in open view of the visitor. The second floor is dedicated to the working units of the business. Semi-enclosed offices offer management the ability to be attached to their departments whilst giving them the privacy to manage. The workbench system allows for the elastic use of the project team, ensuring freelancers can slide in whilst the central create area provides the teams the ability to spread out media concepts, talk, and innovate. "The space is functional, playful, human, welcoming and glossy," says Andrew Cliffe of The World Is Round.